Definition of "obduracy" []

• The state or quality of being intractable or hardened. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "But there are also the white clergy (and rabbi); usually, they were pusillanimous and hesitant to move more than a step or two beyond their conservative members, most of whom supported the egregious Jew-turned-Episcopalian Mayor Henry Loeb, who rivals in obduracy George W. Bush."
• "Even so, events could turn against Republican Machiavellians inasmuch as their obduracy is the best thing Democrats have going for them now that Obamamania has all but disappeared."
• "Hugo says the sinner is "bound down by obduracy of soul, and by the penalty of future damnation"; the grace of God frees man from the darkness brought on by sin, while the absolution of the priest delivers him from the penalty which sin imposes — "The malice of sin is best described as obduracy of heart, which is first broken by sorrow, that later, in confession, the sin itself, i.e. the penalty of damnation, be remitted.""